Half the Battle Against DRM

As the free software and free culture movements have sat quietly by, DRM is now well on its way to becoming the norm in the electronic book publishing industry.

The free culture movement has failed to communicate the reality of DRM and, as a result, millions of people are buying books that they won’t be able to read when they switch to a different model of ebook reader in the future. They are buying books that will become inaccessible when the DRM system that supports them is shut down — as we’ve already seen with music from companies including Wal*Mart, Yahoo, and Microsoft. They are buying books that require that readers use proprietary tools that lock them out from doing basic things that have always been the right of a book owner.

Some anti-DRM advocates are, indirectly, part of this problem as they buy these books and turn to shadymethods of stripping the DRM. Buying DRMed books is voting with your wallet for a system that criminalizes those that insist on living in freedom and will screw us all in the long run when DRM is the only choice we are offered and removing the DRM is difficult, unsafe, and illegal.

Buying non-DRMed e-books is a more freedom-friendly alternative for those that, like me, are excited about not lugging kilograms of paper around our cities and the world. We can do this at "non-mainstream" publishers like Smashwords who explicitly reject DRM. Of course, the big ebook sellers like Amazon, and Barnes and Nobel, and Google all offer non-DRMed books. But none of the major ebook retailers explicitly reveal the DRM status of locked down books before purchase.

It’s hard to support non-DRM alternatives when we can’t recognize them. It’s hard to tell people to not buy DRM ebooks if we can’t even tell them apart. Getting this message through to book buyers — and perhaps even to ebook retailers — seems like a critical first step.

I read the blog post (and the comments to it) with considerable interest, and I’d like to give you the perspective of an author in this matter… here is an excerpt from the homepage for my series of science fiction books (n.b. Book #3 is almost ready for publication…)

“Special notes regarding e-Books downloaded from Apple’s iTunes : It has come to our attention that apparently (despite our clearly-stated requests to the publishers involved), even though we have been very careful not to enable DRM at any time during the e-Book publishing process, Apple has elected to apply some type of DRM to e-Books downloaded from its iTunes service.

The symptom is, when attempting to open the e-Book on anything other than an “approved” Apple device (e.g. an iPhone, iPad etc.), the user is confronted with an error message like “Locked With DRM, Cannot Open Book” (or words to that effect).

Needless to say, this is a very unwelcome development that we obviously had no hand in implementing, but we’ll try to help sort it out if it happens to you. If you purchase one of our e-Books from iTunes and want to use it on a non-Apple device (or just in a way that Apple, in its infinite wisdom, has elected not to “approve of”), please send us an e-mail and we’ll send you an “unlocked” (non-DRM’ed) version of the same e-Book.

We apologize for this problem, which is unfortunately out of our control to completely resolve… all we can do is complain, which we’re definitely doing!”

Tomi: I think that widespread piracy leads to efforts to create stronger DRM systems, more draconian legal systems to punish people, and strong quasi-legal systems of corporate policing that incur enormous collateral damage. And although they are always imperfect, they are very effective. Anti-piracy campaigns are not trying to eliminate piracy, they are trying to make it marginal and commercially insignificant. And they can achieve that — and have in several fields.

The reason DRM failed for downloaded music was not because people were buying tons of iTunes DRM music and stripping it but because the vast majority of people refused to buy the stuff that was DRMed. I’m not suggesting that piracy didn’t play a role in people’s decision to not buy DRMed music (I’m sure it did) but that the importance of not supporting the DRM systems was much more critical to DRM’s death than in the particular alternatives people chose to fill its place.

And in fact, widespread support for DRM-free alternatives like Amazon MP3 store and people’s willingness to “upgrade” to the non-DRM iTunes+ files were an important part of the market shifts that made the complete death of DRM downloadable music possible — something that happened on iTunes totally only last year!

Tomi: My criticism was actually with people who are buying DRMed ebooks and then stripping DRM. The situation you are describing is one where you cannot buy the book at all (even with DRM) so I don’t think this particular criticism applies.

Mako, my broader, implicit argument here is that people who are at a loss b/c of market exclusions can benefit from actions of people who have access to the DRMed e-books when they strip those e-books of DRM and share them. My argument is about illicit deDRMing and piracy as enablers, and ultimately pro illicit practice of deDRMing. I think that widespread piracy also creates a pressure on vendors to compete by making books as widely and as easily available as possible, lowering the barriers to access. That’s at least what I think happened in the case of iTunes and Apple.

But, in principle and disregarding the practical issues of what strategy can best address the inequality of access to the books, I support your point and agree that given the choice one should opt for non-DRMed (e-)books rather than DRMed e-books.

The markets in cultural works come with territorial and price-based exclusions. Price-based exclusion means that in many places (Croatia to name one) there’s no alternative to using pirated e-books as public and academic libraries would typically not have a paper alternative to a recently published title. Territory-based exclusion means that in many of those same places you can’t buy many of the e-books available elsewhere, as vendors such as Amazon usually have territory-based limitations on distribution of e-books. Kindle store doesn’t look nearly as stocked up when you register with a Croatian address as it does when you feign to have a U.S. or U.K. address.

So, from the point of view of underdevelopment, the deDRMing of e-books might not hold to the high moral standard that you’re asking here, but might be tactically a more successful strategy. The same way that audio anti-copying measures on computers were rendered useless and unfeasible by the intensity of circumvention, so can here the argument be made if we buy enough e-books, strip them of DRM and lend them to our friends and peers across territories, the vendors might see the point in making their books as widely available as possible. At least as concerns technology and territory. Of the price-based exclusions we’ll have to take care ourselves.

> millions of people are buying books that they won’t be able to read when they switch to a different model of ebook reader in the future.

This statement is slightly incorrect. When it comes to DRM in ebooks there are three major types. Amazon’s DRM and B&N’s DRM that no other ebook reader (than their own) supports. Then there is Adobe DRM (called Adept) which all ebook readers except Amazon’s support. So if the user must buy DRMed books then better of the two evil is buying from any store other than Amazon and B&N.

A comment by a redditor which I think you should read. (i’m not the author)

> As the free software and free culture movements have sat quietly by, DRM is now well on its way to becoming the norm in the electronic book publishing industry.

There is no nice way to say this, so I’ll be blunt. Fuck off.

Stuff like this really pisses me off. The author shows that he is writing blog posts for the sake of writing blog posts basically. He doesn’t do any research, and has the audacity to blame an entire movement for something they’ve been trying to stop (and still are) since day one. The free software movement has been very vocal about this and RMS even has a short story based on books and sharing that was written years before DRM on digital publications was even a thing.

I urge everyone to take a look at Defective by Design, where most of the objects on the front page are related to ebooks right now.

> The free culture movement has failed to communicate the reality of DRM

What the fuck could we have done differently? Do you know? If so, you should tell us, because if you don’t, then you’re to blame as well and should get off of your moral high horse. And if you don’t have a suggestion, shut the fuck up.

I for one, after I got screwed up without knowing about it (I move from Kobo to Amazong and could not transfer my books), will not buy anomre books from any supplier that does not support Free Culture Mouvement.

I mean, I don’t mind paying for a book, but I want to be able to read it on any platform that I chose, just as much as I stop buying Windows or Mac computer or software.

I had no idea free culture advocates would still be out there buying DRM’d stuff. I thought we won that battle internally in the early 2000s!

But, as with everything, the largest portion of the population will resist by saying (as commenters have) “I need books, e-books are easy, I will buy e-books.” Most people don’t realize that there are many issues at play, they simply look at convenience.

I have a theory that most of those practical resistances to the solutions we suggest can be mitigated by giving a more gradual way to switch to a better system. Of course, for that there needs to be a better system. Hence, if the books aren’t available without DRM, our next step should be to mount assaults on the headquarters of those publishers.

Well, you may not have luck with DRMs in your country, but here in France a good part of the electronic book offer is not locked and it is increasing! Since Amazon is less present than in America, it is quite possible that people are more sensitive to these issues, in fact.

QUOTE: It’s hard to support non-DRM alternatives when we can’t recognize them. It’s hard to tell people to not buy DRM ebooks if we can’t even tell them apart. Getting this message through to book buyers — and perhaps even to ebook retailers — seems like a critical first step. UNQUOTE

Well getting the message to buyers is preaching to the converted.
Retailers only provide what publishers and authors request. My authors have begrudgingly let me put 80% of their books online DRM free but they insist on DRM for the best sellers.
Authors and publishers are your targets because they are the ones who are requesting DRM.

Well, if there is no way to know if a book is DRMed, the anti-DRM/free culture-movement should build a database where such information is collected. Then (ideally) only one person would have to by a book that is defective-by-design.